Diane of the Green Van eBook

But Diane was gone, stumbling headlong from the tent.
Aunt Agatha was to remember her white agonized face
for many a day.

CHAPTER XLVI

IN THE FOREST

With the darkening of the night a wind sprang up over
the bleak, black expanse of lake and swept with a
sigh through the forest on the shore. It was
a wind from the east which drove a film of cloud across
the stars and bore a hint of rain in its freshness.
The rain itself pattering presently through the forest
fell upon the huddled figure of a girl who lay face
downward upon the ground among the trees.

She lay inert, her head pillowed upon her arm, face
to face with the unspeakable shadow that had haunted
Carl. Not married. Aunt Agatha had said,
but just a mother! Now the pitiful fragments
of a hallowed shrine lay mockingly at her feet.
How scornfully she had flashed at Carl!

Diane quivered and lay very still, torn by the bitter
irony of it.

And the Indian mother! Carl had known and Ronador.
She had caught a startled look in the eyes of each
at the Sherrill fete. Every wild instinct,
if she had but heeded the warning, had pointed the
way; the childhood escapade in the forest, the tomboy
pranks of riding and running and swimming that had
horrified Aunt Agatha to the point of tears, and later
the persistent call of the open country.

What wonder if the soft, musical tongue of the Seminole
had come lightly to her lips? What wonder if
Indian instincts had driven her forth to the wild?
What wonder if the nameless stir of atavism beneath
a Seminole wigwam had frightened her into flight.
Indian instincts, Indian grace, Indian stoicism and
courage, Indian keenness and hearing—­all
of these had come to her from the Indian mother with
the blood of white men in her veins.

But the stain of illegitimacy—­

That brought the girl’s proud head down again
with a strangled sob of grief. Shaking pitifully,
she fell forward unconscious upon the ground.

Some one was calling. There was rain and a lantern.

Diane stirred.

“Diane! Diane!” called the voice
of Philip.

At the memory of Philip and Arcadia, Diane choked
and lay very still.

“Diane!” The lantern shone now in her
face and Philip was kneeling beside her, his face
whiter than her own.

“Great God!” said Philip and stared into
her haunted eyes with infinite compassion.

But Philip, as he frequently said, was preeminently
a “practician,” wherefore he gently covered
the girl with his coat, busied himself with the lantern
and, for various reasons, sought to create a general
atmosphere of commonplace reality.